It is Easter morning and we gathered via Zoom to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus - a cornerstone of the Christian faith.
But did you know that there are similar stories of death and resurrection in cultures all over the world? There is a Sumarian story of the goddess Inanna, the Egyptian story of Osiris, Asclepius and Achilles are raised from the dead in Greek mythology, Baldr is raised from Hel in the Norse myth, and there are other resurrection myths throughout the world. Even fairy tales include this theme. Snow White is returned from a “sleeping death”, and in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Wizard Gandalf the Grey is resurrected as Gandalf the White. 

Since these stories appear in so many forms and places, one has to ask, “What is this story trying to tell us?” Jewish tradition teaches that it is always important to find ourselves in Biblical stories, so, where do we find ourselves in the story of the Resurrection?

I believe that people did see or encounter Jesus in some way after his death and burial, but those who encountered him, experienced him in a very different way. Jesus had been transformed. According to the gospel stories, Jesus could pass through locked doors. He appeared and disappeared at will. Some people didn’t recognize him, not even his closest companion, Mary Magdalene until he allowed it. Somehow Jesus was transformed.

But Easter is not just about Jesus, it is about each one of us dying in some metaphorical manner and being transformed - awakened. Maybe it’s about dying to what the Celtic Christians teachers called our false self and awakening our True Self. By false self, I don’t mean bad self. The False Self is more like the self that we show to others, and to ourself. It is what Carl Jung called our persona. The False Self looks at things with the ego as its reference point and changes to meet the various situations in our life. The True Self is the part of you that sees truthfully through divine eyes, the you and the me that is made in the image of God.
The false self needs to metaphorically die for the True Self to be awakened and rise up. Carl Jung would agree with this idea. He wrote: “What happened in the life of Christ happens always and everywhere. The Risen Christ represents the final perspective of every True Self.” Jesus’ disciple, John the Beloved, wrote in a letter to his followers, referring to Christ: “My dear people, we are already the children of God. But what we are in the future is not yet fully revealed. All we know, is that we shall all be like him” (1 John 3:2). But this is not an easy task.

Jung also wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” As in many of the resurrection myths, we must go into hell before we can rise to new life.
Ninth century Celtic Christian teacher, John Scotus Eriugena, taught that we suffer from the “soul’s forgetfulness,” and that Christ came to reawaken us to our true nature or True Self. He came to show us the face of God and he comes now to show us our own true face. But our True Face or Self is well hidden behind the mask of our false self. In the 1991 movie Hook, with Robin Williams plays the now grown up forty year old Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman plays a wonderfully evil but conflicted Captain Hook. In one scene, one of the Lost Boys is examining the grown up Peter and after carefully looking deep into his eyes and touching his face, says, “Oh, there you are Peter.”

So how do we allow our True Self to burst forth from where it is hidden inside of us ? Let me suggest two ways: FIRST: Through Prayer. Far too many Christians however, myself included, have been taught to think of prayer as a transaction. We believe and worship God, so we can pray: “Help me, save me, grant my wishes.” But what if prayer is not transactional but transformative? What if prayer is something which opens us up, connects us, transforms us. Franciscan priest, Fr. Richard Rohr, suggests that we can do this when we make prayer a communion. Whatever we do in a state of communion - connection - love - is prayer. Whatever we do outside of communion is not prayer.

In the Christian scriptures, we are told, “Pray always.” This would be impossible if they were talking about verbal prayer. So these instructions cannot be referring to verbal prayer. They are referring to a state of consciousness We can do anything in a state of conscious union, or mindfully: Wash the dishes, drive the car, walk in the woods, sit and talk with someone, making love, and they can all be prayer. Prayer as communion opens us to living in intimate relationship with creation, with family, friends and all people, and even loving relationship with our own shadows. When we do this, we are open to the voice of the True Self.

SECOND: Be open to the lures and nudges from the True Self. In the book, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, the king tells the young pilgrim, “There is a language in the world that everyone understands, but has forgotten; a language without words..... about oneness.” The Divine language is primordial, and as old as time. Holy Wisdom, Hochma speaks most often through this language of images and symbols, not through spoken language. Nature, signs, synchronicity, and dreams feed the heart and the unconscious. 

A few days ago, I was very discouraged with my progress on the book I am writing. I was telling myself that I was fooling myself if I thought I could write a book. So I stopped writing and opened FaceBook. I immediately saw a meme from author Anne LaMott that stated: “I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good at it.” In my undergraduate years, a long time ago, I doubted that any kind of God existed. I was riding in a car with a friend who was arguing the case for God’s existence. I said, “If there is a God, then why don’t I get some kind of a sign?” I turned the corner, and on a big billboard was on the side of the road that said, “God loves you.” These are two examples of the symbolic way in which the Divine can work with the True Self to reveal itself. Of course we can just laugh these things off as coincidence, but then perhaps we will miss something important.

In the Book of Job we read: “Why do you complain to God that none of your words are answered? For God does speak, now one way, now another, though we may not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, as they slumber in their beds, 
God may speak in their ears” (Job 33:14). Dreams are another powerful  way through which the True Self speaks to us. I suggest keeping a dream journal and reviewing the entries a few time a year and you will become aware of the themes and repeated messages.

The Easter Mystery is part of our human lives.. We all have our dyings and risings: a loved one dies and a baby is born; through the death of our wellness from injury or illness and our recovery into a new appreciation for life and health. Psychologist Abraham Maslow told about his experience of this in an interview in Psychology Today. He said, “After my heart attack my attitude toward life changed. One very important aspect of the postmortem life is that everything gets double precious, gets piercingly important. You get stabbed by things, by flowers, and by babies and by beautiful things - the very act of living, of walking and breathing and eatings and having friends and chatting.  Everything seems to look more beautiful rather than less, and one gets the much-intensified sense of miracles.”

​The Resurrection is not just about whether Jesus physically walked out of his tomb, two millennia ago. It is about Jesus somehow becoming who and what he was always meant to be. It is also about our hope of becoming who we are meant to be - our True Self. The Resurrection gives us hope to proclaim: Christ is risen! Christ’s Spirit lives in me! Life is good! It is indeed a Happy Easter!
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This year we did have snow that blanketed the yard on Christmas Eve with a presence that seems especially felicitous reminding me of the movie White Christmas that we watch every year. There was no mistletoe hanging at the Lacska house this year but Wendy and I don’t need any special seasonal incentive to kiss. We certainly did have presents by the tree. Over the course of my life I must have received thousands of Christmas presents. I’ve received books, sweaters, my share of ties and some beautiful and special gifts from Wendy over our 29 years of marriage. I still remember the joy of being a child and seeing the Zorro Play set under the Christmas tree one year and my Red Ryder BB Gun when I was 12.

I know some folks lament the commercialization of Christmas, but there’s something about it all that appeals to me. While this year all of the Christmas presents we gave were purchased online, I usually enjoy watching shoppers trying to decide on a special gift in local stores and I smile seeing people put money into the red Salvation Army kettles, giving without needing recognition or reward and the bell ringers bundled up in the cold and wishing everyone a merry Christmas.

When my children were little, I loved watching their faces filled with surprise and delight when they ran into the living room early on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left under the tree. And now that they are grown and have children of their own, seeing the exuberance of our young grandchildren when Santa makes a surprise visit to our house. There is something magical about it all that I truly love.

The idea of giving gifts at winter solstice and Christmas comes from many historical sources. The ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia during the week of winter solstice. It was a time for feasting, goodwill, generosity to the poor, the exchange of gifts and the decoration of trees. In Northern Europe, families decorated with evergreens and holly. Odin flew over their homes during the winter solstice riding his eight legged horse Sleipnir and bringing gifts and candy. In the Christian tradition, the magi brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus. When I was a child, Santa left unwrapped gifts under the Christmas tree while we slept on Christmas Eve night. It wasn’t until 3 Kings Day on January 6 that we unwrapped family gifts.

Saint Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myrna Turkey, was known for his generosity and kindness toward the poor and especially toward children. He was known for giving treats and small presents to them and even bags of gold to young women who could not afford a dowry. Santa Claus is an archetypal combination of St. Nicholas and Odin, and became renowned when Clement Moore wrote his now famous poem “Twas the night before Christmas” in 1822.  Since then, we all know that Santa flies through the air in a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, comes down the chimney to fill stockings and surround the Christmas tree with gifts. All of these traditions have blended together to form the Christmas that many of us celebrate today in the Western world.

But did you know that the people of East Asia have a folk figure like St. Nick or Santa? According to their historical legend, Hotei (or Budai) was a whimsical Buddhist monk who lived during the early tenth century in China and was a good and generous man with a kind heart. Like Santa, Hotei has a cheerful face and a big belly, and is widely recognized as the fat, laughing Buddha we see in Asian restaurants and stores. Hotei is considered by some followers of Buddhism, Taoism and Shinto to be the god of good luck and happiness as well as the guardian of children. He carries a large cloth bag over his back that never empties. Inside of it there is an inexhaustible cache of gifts. 

Benedictine sister Mary Lou Kownacki wrote a wonderful poem expressing how Hotei’s bag doesn’t always contain what we hope for, but just what each individual needs:

Hotei: The Enlightened One  by Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB
Hurry, the enlightened one                                   
 Enters the city gates                                      
 An old patched bag slung over his shoulder.
The enlightened one                                        
Meets a hungry child                                    
Reaches into the bag and bread appears.
In a golden carriage a wealthy lord approaches                      
 A lightning bolt escapes the bag and strikes                            
Him to the ground. I am blind, he cries.
Long lines of complainers gather                                
And tongues of fire fly from the bag                                
Into their mouths. They speak with new voices.
Representatives of the state appear.                                 
Truth topples from the bag                                    
And strips them naked.
An old woman pulls at the enlightened one’s robe,                            
Tears streaming from her eyes. 
Out of the bag
Comes a listening heart.
Oh, for that bag you should sell everything.
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The Japanese offer us another gift appropriate for Christmas, It is the practice of Naikan (Japanese for looking inside). Naikan is both a spiritual practice  and a psychotherapy method developed by Yoshimoto Ishin, a prison chaplain in the 1940s. It was adopted by psychotherapists in Japan and is now used worldwide. Teacher and writer Rabbi Rami Shapiro adapted Naikan for his own daily spiritual practice and highly recommends it. Naikan is a Christmas gift we can give to ourselves every day. Here it is is a Chestnut shell:Just before going to bed at night, ask yourself these questions:

1. What gifts have I received today?
2. What gifts have I given today?

Begin by making a written or mental list of what you have received during the past 24 hours in detail. Be specific and list as many things as you can recall. These “gifts” do not have to be anything big. They may be a smile, someone holding a door for you, a nice comment, or a warm beverage. These gifts can include help or support you received from people, but you can broaden this to incorporate gifts from the non-human world of animals and plants, water and other elements. When finished, reflect for a while on each gift on your list. 

Now focus on question 2: What gifts have I given today. Most of what is on this list may be small things you have done for others. Again, when finished, reflect on those things. Over time, you will begin to see the interrelationships with others and with the natural world. For example, Wendy and I love to watch the variety of birds at our bird feeder while we eat breakfast. They give us joy and we fill the feeders and throw some seed on the ground as our gift. It is a reciprocity that is gift to both the birds and us. 

The spiritual practice of Naikan can help us awaken to the kind of gifts we receive and how we respond to them inwardly and outwardly. It will also teach us what kind of giver we are. Kahlil Gibran wrote: 
     There are those who give little of the much which they have and they give it   
     for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
     And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life
    and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give
    with joy and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain,
    and that pain is their baptism… Through the hands of such as these, God speaks,
    and from behind their eyes, God smiles upon the earth.
​     (The Prophet)

COVID-19 changed Christmas for most of us this year. But giving and receiving gifts was likely still part of the celebration - not just gifts wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree or those sent by mail, the but the gifts of telephone conversations or Skype or Zoom get togethers. They were the Christmas carols and songs we listened to and maybe sang along with. They are the familiar holiday  foods we ate and the smiles given and received, but were unseen behind masks, and the simple gift of wishing someone a Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday. 

Many of us have a Christmas tree in our home. A tree that stays green all through the cold dark winter and reminds the us that Spring will return - that the darkness has not overcome the life force or viriditas as Hildegard of Bingen calls it. We decorate our tree with lights of festive colors or that twinkle like little stars that remind us that there is light even in the darkness of winter and of COVID. We hang ornaments that bring back memories of Christmases past and family. Around the base we placed gifts that represent our love and appreciation for each other. Even with the sadness of COVID and the separation that it has caused, we are still gifted in so very many ways.

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Our first significant snow has made an appearance covering this part of the country with a blanket of white. From my office window I see several spruce and pine trees, snow weighing down their evergreen branches. The view charmed me into musing on the symbolism of evergreens as we prepare for Winter Solstice and Christmas. 
Using evergreens is an ancient and multi-cultural tradition associated with the celebration of Winter Solstice. The early Romans decorated their homes with evergreen boughs, holly and mistletoe during the Winter Solstice. The Celts of Northern Europe shared this tradition but added hanging wreaths and garlands, as well as bringing Yule trees into their homes during the cold dark winter. It was believed that the spirits of these trees would inhabit their homes and bless all
​who lived there. For the Celts, the evergreen symbolized the eternal nature of the human soul and the World Tree connecting Earth and Heaven - the seen and the unseen. This tradition was absorbed into Christianity for the celebration of Christmas as a symbol for Christ, who was the Tree of Life. 
In Chinese philosophy too, pines radiate life force or qi (chee), nurturing our souls and spirits. There are usually pine branches on Daoist and Buddhist altars during the dark days of winter. In Japan, homes and temples are decorated with pine branches for the New Year Celebration.
The medieval mystic and healer Hildegard von Bingen also was fascinated by the evergreens. She begins her song O Nobilissima Viriditas with the words, “O most noble evergreen rooted in the sun, and who shines in bright serenity upon the wheel. Nothing on earth can comprehend you. You are encircled in the arms of divine mysteries. You are radiant as the dawn and burn as the flame of the sun.” Perhaps she was influenced by the voice of the Jewish prophet Hosea who is recorded as speaking for the Holy One saying, “I’m like a flourishing evergreen tree; I provide life year-round.”
Hildegard uses the term viriditas as the greening power of God. She regarded it as the animating life-force within all of the cosmos, giving it life, vitality, and fecundity. It has to do with the holy potential within creation. Greening - viriditas -is a state of grace. Even science supports this metaphor. Pine and spruce trees continue to photosynthesize and give off oxygen even in the coldest months. For Hidegard this evergreen energy was associated with the Holy Spirit. In her O Ignis Spiritus Paracliti, she sings:
O fire of the Holy Spirit,
life of the life of every creature,
holy are you in giving life to forms…
penetrating into all places,
in the heights, on earth,
and in every abyss,
you bring and bind all together…
The Eastern Orthodox Church embraces this connection. Green is the liturgical color used during liturgies of the Holy Spirit as opposed to the red vestments used in the Western Christian Church.
It is said that Martin Luther was the first to have decorated a Christmas tree with candles. The story is told that one night before Christmas, while walking through a forest he looked up and saw the stars shining through the tree branches. He was so moved that he went home and told his children that it reminded him of Jesus, who left the stars of heaven to come to earth at Christmas.
After coming home on a cold and dark winter night, one of my favorite Christmas activities is sitting in the living room with Wendy, turning out all of the lights, except those on our Christmas tree, sipping a hot cup of tea or spiced wine, and silently contemplating the Christmas tree with its nostalgic decorations and glistening lights. 
Perhaps this year while sitting, we will be granted the grace of viriditas - of seeing the Christmas tree as the Tree of Life, as a symbol of the Christ who is the life of all humankind. Perhaps this year, with all of the darkness around us, not just from the long cold nights, but from the suffering of people and Mother Earth herself, the Evergreen viriditas of the Christmas tree will provide the comfort and hope of knowing that life, and hope, and divine energy, are still with us even in the bleak midwinter. Maybe we will be able to join with the hopefulness of Lakota mystic Black Elk who said: “It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds.”​

May you all be blessed with a happy and holy Winter Solstice and Christmas.

I was the guest homilist at Ascension Episcopal Church in Stillwater Minnesota on second Sunday of Epiphany. The gospel reading was Luke’s version of the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. It is an important mythical story. 

When I use the word mythical, I use it in the same way that Catholic Priest and mystic, Bede Griffiths did; that all religious stories are ‘myths’ or symbolic expressions of truths that cannot be fully expressed in any other way.

Until I went to seminary, I thought that John the Baptist invented baptism. But Jewish ritual baths called mikvah, were used in Israel for 600 years before Jesus was born. These ritual baths were taken for purification, renewal and healing, and are still an important Jewish ritual. A mikvah must take place in “living water,” a stream, or a spring in which the water moves, which is why Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.

Why water? In many of the world’s creation stories, life comes from water, and now science concurs. Human birth is a microcosm of this story. The fetus lives in the amniotic fluid (mostly water) of the womb until the mother’s “water breaks” and the child is born. For Jews, the mikvah personifies the womb of God and rebirth.

Not only does our human life have this watery beginning, but about 60% of our body is made up of water. Water flows through our veins in blood and it nourishes our cells. It removes toxins and waste from our body. Without enough water, our physical functions, our mental sharpness, and our energy levels are reduced. Water is necessary for life to exist at all. 

The people of the Lakota Nation have the saying: mni wichoni, which means, “Water Is Life.” But this saying also means water has life. It has consciousness. It has a spirit.
In Luke’s gospel story, Jesus has an epiphany; a Divine encounter. After Jesus was immersed in the living water of the River Jordan  “and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my son, my Beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)

I want to share a small epiphany I experienced regarding the relationship between water and God. One warm spring day a few years ago, my wife Wendy and stepson Andrew spent the afternoon on Brighton Beach in Duluth. Wendy and Andrew found a small stream that was working its way down from the woods, over the rocky shore, and into Lake Superior. They decided it would be fun to see if they could dam up the stream. So they set about hauling handfuls of rock and gravel to build their dam. They worked and worked but as they stopped the flow in one spot, the stream just went down to the Lake via a different route. Even when they seemed to stop all the little streams, the water began to flow under their dams. 

I was reminded of something medieval theologian Meister Eckhart wrote, "God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop." I believe that God is constantly guiding us, coaxing us, and prompting us, like the current of a river, from without and from within. No matter what obstacles we face, God is persistent. Like water, the Divine One is always working around and through these obstacles. Franciscan priest and popular spiritual writer, Richard Rohr wrote, ”The River is flowing, and we are in it. The river is God’s love, so do not be afraid."

As an Orthodox Catholic priest, when I preside at the Holy Mystery of Baptism, I say the following, as part of the Rite: “You are baptized. You are illuminated… You are sanctified…. Become what you already are.” And who are we? St. John tells us we are children of God. In this Eastern Orthodox Rite of Baptism, infants are immersed in the waters of the baptismal font as a symbol, a remembrance, that as well as being born from our mothers, we are born from the very womb of God. This is a great mystery — a mythic truth — that we are not fully able to express.

Hermann Hesse wrote this wonderful line in his book Siddhartha that helps me understand this mystery of water and baptism. “They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”

Maybe, if we listen silently to the water, the next time we sit by a river or watch waves breaking on the shore, we too will hear a voice from heaven saying, You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased.






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This posting is my sermon given at Ascension Episcopal Church in Stillwater Minnesota on January 3, 2016

I want to thank Reverend Grace and all of you for inviting me to speak with you today. Let me tell you a little about myself. I am Fr. Yanchy Lacska and I am an ordained priest in the Eastern Orthodox tradition as well as an ordained Interfaith minister. I am also a member of the Lindisfarne Community, an ecumenical new-monastic community in the Anglo-Celtic tradition. I am wearing the habit of the community. The first time my young grandsons saw me wearing this habit they said in surprise, “Grampa! You’re a Jedi.” Besides being a priest and a Jedi, I am also a retired hospital chaplain and a psychologist emeritus.

Today, I want to talk to you about three things: 
First, I want to reminisce a little about my childhood Christmases. 

Second, I want to talk about the wise men in today’s gospel reading and how the celebration and meaning of Christmas developed differently in the Eastern Church than it did in the Western Church.

Third, I want to offer you an idea that may give you a another perspective on giving and receiving gifts at Christmas.  

So let me begin by telling you about my childhood Christmases. When I was a child, Christmas in our family was, as the song says, that most wonderful time of the year.
I was always excited when we bought a Christmas tree and brought it home. My father would take out his old army trunk filled with colored lights, ornaments and the nativity set and we would decorate the tree. On Christmas Eve, we would attend midnight mass as a family. Then, while we were sleeping, Santa mysteriously came and left presents under our tree. 

But Christmas wasn’t over after December 25th. For our family, Christmas ended on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrating the three wise men, as was my father’s tradition growing up in a small village in Hungary. We opened gifts from each other and my dad made a delicious Hungarian crepe dessert filled with jam and sweet cottage cheese called palacsintas.

I remember my father telling us the story of how in his home village, three young boys would be picked each Epiphany to dress up as the three magi. They wore decorated pointy hats, and walked from house to house holding up a star on a stick. The village priest followed blessing each home by sprinkling the doorways with holy water, and then writing the letters: C+M+B (for the names of the three Magi: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar) + the current year above the door with blessed chalk.

Who were these wise men from the East Matthew mentioned in his gospel and celebrated on the Epiphany? There is scholarly debate about whether they were a mythical invention of Matthew, who wrote about them to reinforce the belief that Jesus was the messiah, or whether they really existed and the story based on historical fact. If the story is real, the magi would have beeb members of the priestly caste of the Zoroastrian religion of Persia (Babylon). We know that these magi were highly educated and skilled in astronomy.

Because of the Hebrew captivity and exile in Babylon, the magi would have been well versed in the Jewish Scriptures, including the  predictions of the coming of an anointed child or messiah. It was not only the Hebrew prophets who spoke of the coming of a messiah or a special anointed one. The Persian prophet Zoroaster predicted that an anointed one would be born and that a star would signal his birth. Zoroaster’s description is very similar to that of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, which is a part of the liturgical Advent readings: “A Child will be born to us. And he will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty Messenger, Prince of Peace.” The sudden appearance of a brilliant star would have signaled to the magi, the prophesied birth of this anointed child. 

The story of the magi following the star and bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to honor the Christ Child is a beloved part of the Christmas story along with singing angels and shepherds. But while this story is sweet, what is really important for many Western Evangelical Christians, is not the Christmas story, but Jesus dying on the cross to save us from our sins.

For Eastern Christianity the story is broader and deeper. Jesus did not save us only by his death as a sacrifice to a rigid justice-seeking God. His whole life was important to our salvation: His birth, his teaching and healing ministry, his death, and his resurrection. 
In this Eastern Christian view, salvation is not a one time event in our lives that occurs when we accept Jesus as a personal savior or when we are baptized. Salvation is understood as the ongoing, lifelong (and maybe after life is this body) process. Salvation is understood in it original Hebrew and Greek meaning healing and wholeness. Salvation has the same root as the salve we put on a wound. Salvation is process of becoming more and more united with God. St. Athanasius wrote in the third century, “God became human so that humans can become like god.”

Franciscan priest and popular author, Fr Richard Rohr, also understands salvation this way. He wrote, “Somehow, to live in conscious union with God, is what it means to be saved.” Even Jesus, quoting the psalms, said, “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.” (John 10:34 - Psalm 82:6) Jesus also said, “Be perfect, as your heavenly parent is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

What on earth does it mean to say “you are gods or to be perfect?” Doesn’t our faith teach that there is only one God, in three Persons? How can human beings be gods? In Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christianity, this concept is nothing new or shocking. It is called theosis. Theosis is the understanding that human beings, who are mythically created in the Divine Image and Likeness, can be truly united with God, and so become like God to such a degree that as St Paul wrote, “we participate in the divine nature,” and as Jesus prayed in John’s gospel, “Just as you (God) are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.”

C. S. Lewis understood this concept and expressed it in his book Mere Christianity. Lewis wrote: “The command ‘Be ye perfect’ is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He said that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him. He will make us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creatures, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.” (1952, p.174)

The word Jesus used that is usually translated as perfect, more accurately means complete, undivided, and whole.

In Matthew’s gospel story, the magi opened their treasure chests, and offered gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Treasure chests is appropriate, because these would have been very expensive gifts. But these were more than expensive gifts traditionally given to royalty. They would have also been understood by the magi as mystical symbols of wholeness.

Gold represents the mind. Like gold needs to be refined to separate it from base minerals, so must our minds be purified in order to hear the guidance of Holy Wisdom.

Frankincense represents our spirit or emotion. Frankincense has been used for millennia during religious ceremonies and is still the major ingredient in church incense. Recent research at Johns Hopkins University found that smelling frankincense induces feelings of peace and relaxation and can even relieve depression and anxiety. So frankincense helps us become calm and attuned to the holy or sacred during ceremony or meditation.

Myrrh represents the body. Myrrh was used to embalm dead bodies in ancient times. But it was also an ingredient in ancient medicine. In fact, myrrh is still used in medicines today. During his crucifixion, Jesus was offered wine with myrrh to ease his pain. So myrrh represents healing and life after death. 

These gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh then are symbols of mind, body and spirit, symbols of wholeness, of salvation. This wholeness not only focuses on our personal wellbeing, or on a restoration of our unity with God. It includes the Divine One’s desire to heal and make all of creation the realm of heaven, the place and time when all things in heaven and earth are in sacred unity. Indeed, one of the titles or names for God in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, is Abwoon, which literally means Sacred Unity.

Maybe the story of Christmas is more than a story only about the infant born in Bethlehem ~ more than about magi following a star and giving gifts. Maybe it is the story about which St. Paul wrote, “God has chosen to make known the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” ~ Colossians 1:27 Medieval teacher and mystic, Meister Eckhart once said: ‘What good is it that Christ was born in Bethlehem if he is not born now in your heart?’

​I want to leave you with a challenge. On some night this week, when all is dark and quiet, sit in front of your Christmas tree with only the tree lights on, or if your tree is gone, light a candle and sip a glass of wine or tea and think about the light of the Star that guided the magi to the infant in a manger, the light that still guides us. Think of the gifts you gave and received at Christmas in a new light. See each gift you gave as recognition and of honoring the Christ who resides in that person, and each gift you received as honoring the Christ in you. Reflect on how you are on the path of becoming whole and one with God, one with each other, and one with all of creation. And then you will truly have a happy new year.